


Day 11: Cooking - The Muffin Men

by 221b_hound



Series: Techienician: Botanical Love [12]
Category: Dredd (2012), Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: 30 Days of Techienician, Cooking, M/M, Muffins, Techienician
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-09
Updated: 2016-09-09
Packaged: 2018-08-14 00:42:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7992259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leslee thinks Matt needs to smile more. But not so much like a serial killer. Matt seeks Techie's assistance to find some other way to meet Leslee's advice that he be 'nicer'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day 11: Cooking - The Muffin Men

**Author's Note:**

> Since I don't tend to be on my computer on weekends, I'm posting days 10 and 11 today.

“Damn, Matt, you need to smile more. All that scowling, no wonder you put people off.”

Matt looks at Shift Supervisor Leslee with some surprise through his glasses, clearing the preceding squint from his expression. He’s tired and has a headache and looking at the radar diagnostics display feels like hard work.

“I don’t scowl.” He frowns while saying it.

“Well, you’re no smiler,” she points out. “You and that redhead of yours. You’re both so _serious_ all the time.”

Pleasure at Techie being described as ‘that redhead of yours’ vies with the notion that they are both seen as so very serious. He’s not a laugh-a-minute guy, he knows, but he and Techie laugh together all the time.

“You should try smiling more, is all I’m saying.”

Matt tries a smile on. Leslee flinches. “Oh hell, no, Matt. You look like you’re planning how to get away with my murder.”

Matt and Leslee get on better these days. This is partly because they are both really, really tall and solid – not unlike their General. Now that Leslee has turned her more wrathful attentions to Jex and Parvinak, who are a bit sly and lazy, it turns out she and Matt are big-boned, mountain-tall, take-up-space comfortable with each other’s presence.

But hell, Leslee does like to give him free advice on how to get on. Matt thinks he gets on fine, now that Jex and Parvinak have mostly given up their campaign of torment (on the basis that every time they’re mean, something small but appalling happens to them).

“Just… try to be nice,” says Leslee.

“I am nice,” he says.

Leslee flinches again, but she says, “Nicer.”

Later, Matt, mystified, asks Techie how that might be managed.

Techie frowns. “You are nice.”

“I know.”

It’s a puzzle.

Finally, Techie remembers that when he was owned by Ma-Ma’s crime clan, people would try to win her favour with gifts. It took credits or something of considerable value to buy protection, but just trying to win a favourable hearing might include fine cloth, beautiful jewels or delicacies. So yes, true, sometimes the food was poisoned – gift-bearers were usually made to taste their own offerings, with some distressing results – but the principle is sound.

Matt and Techie make a plan. The first step is to rescue a broken down personal cooker from the trash. Matt fixes the hardware – the bent door, the cracked glass. Techie scours the logic chips and reprograms them. Pilfering ingredients is harder, but they find and even buy everything they need.

The first batch is a disaster, overcooked and salty.  The second batch doesn’t rise properly. The third, like the children’s stories go, is just right.

Matt and Techie take the tray of berry muffins to the break room next shift. Matt gestures at them when most of the crew have arrived.

As always, there are ideas in his head that won’t turn into words. He means to say, “They’re a peace offering. Can’t we just get on with work?” but all that happens is he shrugs, he waves at them, he says, “Muffins,” and that’s it.

For some reason, Matt’s colleagues seem… reluctant. They stand around staring at the muffins as though they are a small, wheat-based, berry-filled minefield. Matt’s expression begins to morph into that puzzled, prickly hurt that so often is interpreted as aggressive and surly. Which, yes, it sort of is. Techie stands with his hands clasping each other, a little behind Matt, all uncertainty, because suspicious reactions to gifts of foodstuffs have, in his history, been met with sudden and bloody violence, and he’s thinking this was probably a very very very bad idea after all.

Then Leslee, who may not be the best supervisor the Finalizer has ever seen, but she’s not wanting for courage, makes a sudden, bold grab for a muffin and takes a determined bite.

The surprise on her face is comical, and slightly offensive to the bakers in question.

“Oh. My. Kriffing. Hell.” She says it through a mouthful of berry muffin, hastily lifting  her hand to catch falling crumbs so she can lick them off her palm a minute later, “This is kriffing _delicious_.”

Ice broken, muffins are distributed, a delicious time is had by all.

It’s a weekly thing, now. Techie and Matt bake, and it doesn’t matter if they don’t smile enough or if everyone thinks they’re too serious and a bit odd. They bring tasty foodstuffs to the communal table, and everyone thinks more kindly of them as a result.

Well. Except maybe Jex and Parvinak, who find that when they fall into their old, evil ways, somehow their share of the treats – and only their share – either vanish, or are made with salt, or laxatives.

Matt smiles then, and Techie. Exactly like they know where the bodies are buried.


End file.
